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The voice behind China’s beloved animated character Ne Zha took center stage alongside global cinema luminaries as the Shanghai International Film Festival hosted its first-ever Kering Women In Motion forum, bringing the luxury conglomerate’s decade-long advocacy for women in film to Chinese shores.

The star-studded panel at the 27th edition of the festival, titled “Kering Women In Motion Talk – In Her Flow,” and moderated by actor and host Andrew Liang, featured an eclectic mix of talent: Lyu Yanting, the voice performer who brought the mischievous boy character to life in animated blockbusters “Ne Zha” and “Ne Zha 2”; Brazilian actor-producer Luiza Mariani fresh from creating a female-led film crew; Indian filmmaker Kiran Rao, who doubles as a Golden Goblet Awards juror this year; and Chinese actor-turned-producer Liang Jing, now eight years into her behind-the-camera transformation.

“This is particularly meaningful because this year marks 120 years of Chinese cinema and 130 years of world cinema,...

One Shot invites close readings of the basic unit of film grammar.Women.“I swear you are my only beloved wife!” the text on the computer screen reads, above a drawing of two hearts skewered by a single arrow. This message, rendered with the program AtariArtist on a Taxan Crt monitor, is Derek’s (Chow Yun-fat) response to a pointed question from his wife, Bao-er (Cora Miao): “Will there be more like her?” Bao-er refers to Derek’s affair with a younger woman, which has led the couple to separate. Now, Bao-er interrogates him from out of frame, in bed, in a reunion that signifies both a lapse in judgment and an effort to model a wholesome family dynamic for their young son. Derek’s computerized response, which gradually loads during a strained pause in their conversation, willfully evades the question. “Does this look like a poem?” he asks...

Some years ago, I asked my friend Victor Fan to suggest a book that could work as an introduction to the cinema of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the same time, and his rather quick answer was “Chinese National Cinema” by Yingjin Zhang. A few years after that, now that I have finished the book, I have to extend a big thank you to him, because this book not only fulfilled my request, but is actually one of the best publications about the history of cinema I have ever read. Let us take things from the beginning though.

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In a prologue that is somewhat intricate, but definitely less complicated than usual in academic books, Yingjin Zhang on the issue of defining Chinese National Cinema under the complicated historical background of what the book calls the Three Chinas: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

There are two storylines at the center of Stanley Kwan‘s labyrinthine “Center Stage” (1991). The main one follows the life of Ruan Lingyu, a real-life actress who was perhaps China’s most celebrated film performer in the early 1930s. Ruan arguably became even more of a legend when she committed suicide at age 24, as her private life became the scandalmongering subject of tabloid gossip. The second storyline is set in 1991 and follows a film crew (shot in black and white) making a biopic about Ruan. They discuss her life, interview some of the surviving film crews who knew her (it sometimes feels like a documentary of Kwan documenting his own filmmaking), and eventually recreate Ruan’s life on their own soundstage.

Center Stage is screening at Five Flavours

Archival footage of the actual Ruan Lingyu in some of her extant films allows audiences to connect and compare the two eras and narrative levels.

by Mehdi Achouche

There are two storylines at the center of Stanley Kwan's labyrinthine “Center Stage” (1991). The main one follows the life of Ruan Lingyu, a real-life actress who was perhaps China's most celebrated film performer in the early 1930s. Ruan arguably became even more of a legend when she committed suicide at age 24, as her private life became the scandalmongering subject of tabloid gossip. The second storyline is set in 1991 and follows a film crew (shot in black and white) making a biopic about Ruan. They discuss her life, interview some of the surviving film crews who knew her (it sometimes feels like a documentary of Kwan documenting his own filmmaking), and eventually recreate Ruan's life on their own soundstage.

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Archival footage of the actual Ruan Lingyu in some of her extant films allows audiences to connect and compare...

By Ian Shanghai

At the dawn of the year 2000, Beijing's hutong, these narrow communal alleys nowadays dedicated to mass tourism, were not exactly the gentrified cozy district it turned to be: promiscuity, resourcefulness and street codes infused with rigid traditions are customary. Mrs. Wang is used to cope with these, but lately this is not exactly the best time of her life.

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The stock of pirated DVDs she was selling for a living has just been seized by the local police while the parents of the kid she was babysitting on daytime went away without an address, escaping from unpaid rents. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the family of a mahjong gambler her husband has crippled in a fight is chasing her, claiming direct compensation in cash. With her hopeless husband in jail and a kid to get rid of, without the infamous hukou...

For the people of my generation (I am 42 btw) Ruan Lingyu will be mostly known as the focus of Stanley Kwan's masterpiece, “Center Stage”. Patrick Galvan, however, although starting from the same point, delved intently in the life and career of the silent movies star, coming up with a book that presents both, as much the history of China and the Shanghai movie industry in the 20th century, in one of the most entertaining film history books ever to fall in my hands.

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The presentation of her life, which obviously is worthy of a movie itself, begins with Ruan Fenggen's (the name she was born with) childhood in intense poverty, with her father dying when she was young and her mother bringing her up by working as a housemaid. It was this job of hers that led...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)

Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas, Maggie Cheung delivered one of the best performances of her career in Stanley Kwan’s lush, definitive, and boldly conceived biopic Center Stage, also known as Actress. Now gorgeously restored in 4K from the original negative, and approved by Kwan himself, the film follows Cheung as iconic silent film star Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame. With Cheung receiving the Best Actress award at Berlinale, the film...

"People can sometimes be very weak. But we hope to see strong people." Film Movement has released a new trailer for the 4K restoration of the beloved Hong Kong film Center Stage, made by filmmaker Stanley Kwan. It originally debuted in 1991, but didn't play at film festivals until 1992 when it showed at the Berlin Film Festival (where Cheung won Best Actress); it didn't even open in the US until 1994. The film is a biopic telling the story of 1930's Chinese actress Lingyu Ruan, played by the very talented Maggie Cheung. As The Film Stage explains: "Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame." The film's cast includes Han Chin, Tony Leung, Carina Lau, Waise Lee, Lily Li, Lawrence Ng, and Cecilia Yip. As always, discovering...

Fury (David Ayer)

[via the BFI]

The programme for the 58th BFI London Film Festival launched today, with Festival Director Clare Stewart presenting this year’s rich and diverse selection of films and events. The lineup includes highly anticipated fall titles including David Ayer’s Fury, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, the Sundance smash Whiplash, Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language 3D, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Jason Reitman’s Men, Women and Children and Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild.

As Britain’s leading film event and one of the world’s oldest film festivals, it introduces the finest new British and international films to an expanding London and UK-wide audience, offering a compelling combination of red carpet glamour, engaged audiences and vibrant exchange. The Festival provides an essential profiling opportunity for films seeking global success at the start of the Awards season, promotes the careers of British and...

Great news for us lovers of Asian Cinematography. The British Film Institute (BFI) along with Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) will present one of the largest and most complete retrospective of Chinese Cinema. The films presented will not be only from China itself but there will be productions from Hong Kong and Taiwan too. This awesome event will be held from June until October 2014 so don´t worry you will be able to enjoy the showcase throughout the year.

Each month the BFI will present different programs with different showcases. In total there will be five programs lasting around one month each. During June, The Golden Age the focus will be classic movies from the 1930s and 40s. Also during June there will be another program called A New China which movies were done during the post-war era and focus on melodramas, war films and different satires. On July this change in the Swordsmen,...

"There have been lots of books that tell the history of the movies, but so far almost no films," Mark Cousins told indieWIRE's Peter Knegt last September. We should qualify that statement, of course. As Nick Pinkerton notes in the Voice, there have been documentaries on the history of cinema, though some might filter that history "through the director's particular prejudices or national heritage (Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma, finally released on DVD last December; Oshima's 100 Years of Japanese Cinema; A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies). Or it might mean sticking to one facet of the timeline, as in historian Kevin Brownlow's extraordinary work on the medium's adolescence, Hollywood."

That point made, back to Cousins: "You can sit in a room to write a book about movies, but to tell the story of how a flickering Victorian novelty became a global art form on film, you have to travel the world,...

<div>Bollywood legends Guru Dutt, Nargis, Meena Kumari, Amitabh Bachchan and Pran have been named in the list of CNN's top 25 Asian actors of all time released ahead of the Oscar night Sunday.</div><div></div><div>With five actors listed, India tops the list featuring actors from India, China, Pakistan, Japan, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Korea.</div><div></div><div>'In the history of the Academy Awards, only two Asians have ever taken home a Best Actor or Actress statue (we don't count Ben Kingsley as true Asian),' said CNN announcing the list celebrating 'the top Asian legends of the silver screen.</div><div></div><div>'Yet Asia has produced incredibly talented thespians that have changed the course of their nation's cinematic history.'</div><div></div><div>Guru Dutt has been 'frequently compared to Orson Welles for directing and starring in films that ushered in a golden era of Hindi cinema. Because of his soulful acting, Guru Dutt's 'Pyaasa' and 'Kaagaz Ke...

Bollywood legends Guru Dutt, Nargis, Meena Kumari, Amitabh Bachchan and Pran have been named in the list of CNN's top 25 Asian actors of all time released ahead of the Oscar night Sunday.

With five actors listed, India tops the list featuring actors from India, China, Pakistan, Japan, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Korea.

"In the history of the Academy Awards, only two Asians have ever taken home a Best Actor or Actress statue (we don't count Ben Kingsley as true Asian)," said CNN announcing the list celebrating "the top Asian legends of the silver screen.

"Yet Asia has produced incredibly talented thespians that have changed the course of their nation's cinematic history."

Guru Dutt has been "frequently compared to Orson Welles for directing and starring in films that ushered in a golden era of Hindi cinema. Because of his soulful acting, Guru Dutt's 'Pyaasa' and 'Kaagaz Ke Phool' are...

Record crowds celebrated Chinese new year in the UK last Sunday. So, as a handy resource for all those looking to extend their sinophilia through the rest of 2010, AJBee presents a China primer in film clips

The welcoming of the year of the Tiger is a perfect excuse to roar swiftly through the customs celebrated in China this time of year. Many generations of director have highlighted these, from Zhang Yimou's ancient emperors to the modern-day comrades of Xie Fei's Black Snow. Hong Kong in the 90s gave us, in my opinion, a new golden age of film unseen since 30s Hollywood; a dynamic new medium to show to world Chinese customs. But while the men behind the camera change, and the country around them, too, the traditions remain constant.

So, let's celebrate the new year with dumplings, fireworks and film clips in five step beginners guide to Chinese New Year.

He’s recognized the world over for art house dramas and romances starring the brightest stars of Hong Kong. But for his next project, director Stanley Kwan is trying his hand at science fiction.

The Canadian Press reports Kwan’s new film, which is currently shooting in Shanghai, will revolve around a troupe of acrobats from 1930’s China who travel to the present day, where they befriend a group of modern youths. It will be his first movie in four years, after the 2005 romance Everlasting Regret made a splash on the festival circuit.

Kwan described the new film, which has the Chinese title Dancing with Your Heart, as "The Matrix meets song and dance." It will show off the talents of acting and music students Kwan met while developing a Chinese musical.

"Very few of the graduates of Chinese performing arts schools have the chance to start a career in performing arts,...